this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Humans reach North America is listed at ~16k years ago. That's based on the Clovis First model that was still dominant then.

Now we know small populations of humans were already in the Americas when this chart begins, having traveled along the coast from around what is today Japan.

Archaeology is progressing so quickly these days that even XKCD is no longer an up-to-date source!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

Damn, idk who to trust for information now if not wikixkcdia

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What should I search for if I want to read up more on this? I hadn’t heard of these recent developments.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"Kelp Highway" is a common name for the theory, since it involves exploiting rich marine ecosystems while expanding down the coast relatively quickly.

"Pre Clovis Sites" should get you to the level of specific digs.

"Western stemmed points" are the most solid link back to the cultures in East Asia after the last glacial maximum. I believe the genetic data is not as clear on this yet but is coming together.

The Oregon Archaeological Society's YouTube channel has a number of professional lectures for amateur enthusiasts that touch on this - https://youtu.be/KPpgn-NVeLI?si=SCKpePUNp3pKyPSa i think this is the one with a lot of info on the evidence for links to cultures in Japan.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Rad, thank you!!

[–] [email protected] 58 points 10 months ago

Earth has been iceless before of course, and I've heard people claim its not a problem for it to happen again.

But if only this heating had occured slowly over a period of ~45 million years, nobody would have panicked. We'd adapt. Fauna and flora would adapt. We'd not even notice the ice caps melting.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Reminds me of a scientist discussing an economics paper that said warming to +4°C would only cost 1% of GDP, so we should stop with all the warming alarmism.

The scientist remarked that if you entered -4°C in that calculation used in the paper you would also get 1% of GDP, but in reality -4°C would cover most of the major cities with a mile of ICE.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Because think of the the FREE ICE! The ice economy would boom! Think of all the new ice jobs!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

"Selling ice to Eskimos," as the expression goes.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Holy fuck Lemmy needs a fuckin thumbnail system for shit like this.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Depends on your app then, because the browser does

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

Strictly a mobile user, but on Boost the thumbnails are better than browser.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I assume you use a card view instead of list view. In list view every picture is shown as thumbnail. Even if there were no pictures this long you have to scroll way more in card view than in list view.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I use card view because I'm mainly here for the memes. I don't want to have to click on every single picture just to see the full picture. But if the picture is over a certain size it should be cropped until opened manually.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This image never fails to depress. I wonder what an updated version would look like?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Not much different, we aren't very far ahead. The trajectory remains more or less the same. Global anomaly was 1.2°C in 2023.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Maybe this'll help drive it home? Probably not

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

It absolutely will not. It's become abundantly clear that any sort of actually meaningful climate action will simply not happen in the current system, which is focused on profit at all costs and run by literal psychopaths. We'll continue seeing cosmetic consumer-facing restrictions like the ban on plastic straws that ultimately are nearly pointless in the grand scheme of things – the real polluters are corporations and people that are much too rich (ie. powerful) for their contribution to this climate clusterfuck to be meaningfully regulated.

For actual change that's not just tiny incremental and ineffectual bullshit that mainly places the blame on consumers, we'd have to redo our entire economic system and that's not going to happen without a lot of bloodshed.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

It did for me the first time I saw it (ages ago).

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

This image is wrong. 2016 was only 8 years ago. Yet our current temperature is well over +1C.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And I read somewhere that current ocean temps are more indicative of +3℃ of warming.

Like, most politicians are still f**king around like +1.5℃ is still decades off. We’ve already passed that point by most any reasonable, rational, and non-politically-farked standard.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh yeah. But what can you do? People prefer their comfort to the survival of their own children. Which is doubly worse because the boomer and X generation literally enslaved their own children, so, not only the newer generations will likely die out of famine, overheating, or violence from their own peers, but in the meanwhile they also have a terrible time.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

I like the graph, but I was hoping that it was an updated version. :(

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The only thing is that this diagram makes it seem like the sea levels rising is caused by ice melting, while in reality it is because as water heats up, it expands.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ice that was on land will raise the sea level if it melts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sure, but the amount of ice on land is but a small spec compared to the water in the ocean.

If all the ice in the world melted, it wouldn't affect the ocean level that much. Compared to thermal expansion of the water.

Ice melting is a symptom, not a cause.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

You're right about sea level rise over the last century, but the big sea level rise at the end of the last ice age was in fact mainly a result of ice melting — big parts of North America and Europe had ice thousands of feet thick on them.

Melting all the ice in the world today would add almost 200 feet to sea levels.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Stop having kids. Doing away with most modem technology to save the planet, if that's what they really want to do, is in no way shape or form even remotely sustainable with this many people on the planet aka mouths to feed. In fact look at current costs of living vs wages. Climate issues aside things aren't even sustainable as it is and that's without extreme downsizing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A largely organizational issue, we currently throw out at least 30% of all our food, not to mention we already consume way more than healthy by any metric and we still have much more on the planet to exploit. We live in an unprecedented time of access and yet all 3 super powers are hellbent on preserving poverty like it's their cultural heritage or something. There's absolutely no rational reason Africa shouldn't be among the most prosperous regions, just like there's no rational reason that at least 20% of Russians don't even have running water, let alone warm or drinking water or that America as the richest of em all, still can't provide the most basic needs for its citizens like almost every other country. Nearly all famines and insecurities with few exceptions around the world are 100% man made.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

All I know is that life is hard but things could be a lot harder so I'm never having kids so I can focus on looking out for myself. Things could be a whole lot better too. The last thing any government deserves is for us to reward and enable them by birthing more babies.